The Editors

The Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses has been won by Fitzcarraldo Editions for Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s novel Animalia, translated from French by Frank Wynne. Because of Covid-19, the £10,000 prize money this year is being divided equally between all the shortlisted publishers.

In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman, Charles Arthur and Jennifer Cobbe talk about the impact of different online platforms on the general election campaign, from Twitter and Facebook to WhatsApp and TikTok. Is micro-targeting getting more sophisticated? Is viral messaging getting more important? Or are traditional electioneering techniques still driving voter engagement? They also ask if there's any scope left for a 'December surprise'.

In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman, Charles Arthur and Jennifer Cobbe talk about the impact of different online platforms on the general election campaign, from Twitter and Facebook to WhatsApp and TikTok. Is micro-targeting getting more sophisticated? Is viral messaging getting more important? Or are traditional electioneering techniques still driving voter engagement? They also ask if there's any scope left for a 'December surprise'.

In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman, Helen Thompson, Chris Brooke and Peter Sloman look back to the February and October general elections of 1974. A lot of 2019 politics started back then, from the rise of the SNP to the Liberals getting squeezed by the electoral system. But it was different, too: they have stories of campaigning by landline and hovercraft, MPs on acid, naked civil servants and experts being taken seriously. They also discuss the way the 1974 elections led to the rise of Thatcherism and changed British politics for ever.

In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman, Helen Thompson, Chris Bickerton and Mike Kenny ask if this is one election or many. Do national vote shares mean much any more, given all the regional variations? How is the Remain Alliance meant to work? Is this a Brexit election? And is 2015 or 2017 (or neither) a better guide to 2019? They also discuss the recent election in Spain and explore parallels between gridlock there and possible gridlock here.

In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman and Helen Thompson talk to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Esther Duflo about better ways to do economics. From investing in left-behind places to helping people adapt to change, they discuss good and bad economic ideas about some of the biggest challenges we face, and how it all connects back to politics. They also talk about what some of the world‘s richest countries can learn from some of the poorest.

In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman, Helen Thompson, Catherine Barnard and Chris Brooke discuss where we might be heading. Does Boris Johnson have enough to persuade the wavering MPs he needs to get his Brexit deal over the line? Do his opponents have enough to stop him? Can European leaders still force the issue? If there is an election, does it all change again? What's actually in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill? And what does it all mean for the future of the Union?

In the latest episode of the Talking Politics podcast, David Runciman, Gary Gerstle and Helen Thompson discuss the state of the Trump presidency, from impeachment and cover-ups to Syria and Ukraine. They ask what it would take for Republican senators to desert him and what the collateral damage is likely to be for the Democratic presidential candidates.

A book to mark the LRB’s 40th anniversary, compiled by Sam Kinchin-Smith, is published today by Faber. More scrapbook than festschrift, it traces an incomplete history of the paper through reproductions of letters, drawings, postcards, fieldnotes, typescripts and covers from the last four decades, introduced and contextualised by writers, editors and designers from the LRB’s past and present. To keep the book under two kilos, we could only include a couple of pages from most of the manuscripts. But there’s no weight limit online, so here are all 29 pages of Oliver Sacks’s typescript for ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’.